ACM'2014 succesfully over!

We would like to thank all the participants in the ACM conference 2014 in Helsinki. Thanks to you, the conference was a great success.

Old news...

June 13th: ACM 2014 program and information package

Dear ACM participants,

With just around two weeks to the beginning of ACM 2014 in Helsinki,
we would like to inform you of several practical issues concerning
the conference. With around 500 participants from 44 countries,
we are anticipating an exciting meeting.

For the assigned session chairladies and chairmen, please consider this
posting and message as a kind invitation for you to act as chairs in the
sessions indicated. Due to time and resource limitations, we have not
been able to send individual inquiries. Let us know if, for one reason
or another, you wish to introduce changes in your involvement. For those
of you not yet having chair duties but wishing to become involved,
let us know.

2. ABSTRACTS

We will soon be ready with the editorial process to harmonize the
language and format of the abstracts. You will be having an opportunity, for a
short period of time, to comment on the proofs of your abstract(s). Further
information on the schedule will be available next week.

3. ARRIVAL

For flight passengers: Most airlines arrive at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. The taxi journey to central Helsinki costs ca. 40 euros. An alternative way is by bus 615 or 620, which takes you to the Railway Square. The bus tickets costs 5 euros and it can be purchased from the driver (cash only!). The bus leaves every 15-20 minutes.

The other options is to take the Finnair City Bus to the Railway station. The ticket costs 6.30 euros and can be purchased from the driver; credit cards are accepted. The Finnair City Bus is convenient for guests staying at the Unihome Töölö Towers, since it stops at "Hesperian puisto", from where the distance to the apartments is about 300 m. The map and timetable are at http://media.finnair.com/files/pdf/FINNAIR_CITY_BUS_TIMETABLE.pdf. Please note, that this is NOT a public transport bus and hence, public transport tickets are not valid on this route.

For train passengers: The trains from St. Petersburg and Moscow as well as
secondary airport locations in Turku and Tampere arrive at the Central Railway
station.

The Helsinki city centre is covered with a convenient network of tram routes. At registration, we will be providing you with the public transportation ticket,
which will be valid from Sunday June 29th to Saturday July 5th. Please refer to
the map on our web-site at http://www.helsinki.fi/acm2014/venue.shtml.

4. ICE-BREAKER PARTY (SUNDAY JUNE 29TH)

On Sunday June 29th, there will be an ice-breaker party at the Helsinki Observatoryhttp://www.observatorio.fi/english/
(see the map at http://www.helsinki.fi/acm2014/venue.shtml). New potatoes,
strawberries, and other light food and drinks will be served. The band
Rinne Rockers will play contemporary local and international favourites in the observatory garden at 17:00-17:30 and 19:00-19:30.

No fee is collected for the party, but we would appreciate if you could indicate your interest in attending the party through the following form:https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/52220/lomake.html
so we could reserve the correct amount of food. The observatory will be open
from 16:00 to 20:00, and you may come and go as you like. For those wishing
to attend, there will be guided tours of the observatory every hour.

Registration will be open during the ice-breaker party.

5. REGISTRATION (SUNDAY JUNE 29TH AND MONDAY JUNE 30TH)

To avoid congestion on Monday morning, there are two preliminary registration points open. A registration point is open during the ice-breaker party at the Helsinki Observatory on Sunday, June 29th. For those staying at the University guest house Unihome Töölö Towers, the registration will take place along with the check-in. The registration on site will open at 07:30 on Monday morning. The first session
will begin at 08:30. Information about registration on Tuesday-Friday will be
offered in the next posting.

Videos and animations can be included in the slides, but one must remember to provide also the source files for these together with the presentation. PowerPoint users are advised to use "File – Save & Send – Package Presentation for CD" function to create a complete package including videos and animations.

Presentations must be tested and delivered to the ACM staff in the speaker-ready room (Meeting room 1 on the second floor) well before the session. Your own laptop can be used only in exceptional cases and must be tested with the ACM staff before the session.

Posters: Our poster boards are 95 cm (37.4") wide and 128 cm (50.4") tall. Posters of size A0 (84.1 x 118.9 cm) or posters printed on 36" (91.4 cm) wide paper will fit. You can see your poster location from the printed program. The posters are divided into two groups - one half will be presented from Monday to Tuesday and the other half from Thursday to Friday. The poster session is on those days from 10:30 to 12:00
(and during the coffee breaks).

We offer the possibility to have your poster printed and transported to the conference venue. This service costs 25 euros per poster. If you are interested, please let us
know by June 17 by sending a message to acm-2014@helsinki.fi. The actual poster
should be submitted by June 22. Acceptable formats are Adobe PDF (pdf) or PowerPoint (ppt, pptx).

June 4th: The conference program published

Dear ACM Colleagues,

Please see the scientific program of the ACM conference concerning the
invited plenary talks (30 min including discussion), invited parallel talks
(20 min including discussion), and ordinary oral talks (10 min including
discussion). The rest of the scientific contributions are posters and we
will be circulating the poster scheduling in a few days' time. The ACM SOC
is acknowledged for essential help in program preparation.

Note that we have been able to provide a time slot for all colleagues desiring
an oral presentation. Due to the large number of submissions, we have been forced
to introduce four parallel sessions for the Monday-Thursday parts of the parallel
program. Note also that a hard limit of two oral talks has been applied.

You will see that, at this point of the oral program preparation (although
close to being final), the program does not yet include, for example, session
names or indicators for particular entities of talks. However, we have spent
much effort and time to produce a balanced program, where we have strived
for minimizing harmful overlap while simultaneously taking into account
the time intervals of participation for each individual participant.
Thus, we would like to stress that there is significant inertia
in introducing any changes in the oral program. (Please note, in particular,
that the ACM LOC is composed of scientists and students who will need to complete
their own ACM presentations amidst the conference organization! )

As to the strawberries and new potatoes, the local spring and summer season is
ahead by several weeks and, for example, strawberries are expected already for the
summer solstice (the season will last through the ACM meeting).

Hoping for today's weather to last (sunny and 27 deg C)
and looking forward to seeing you soon in Helsinki!

With best regards,

Karri Muinonen
on behalf of ACM SOC and ACM LOC

May 14th: Presentation guidelines

April 1st: Abstract system back online

Our abstract submission system crashed around 22:30 UTC on the 31st due to heavy load. The problem has been sorted out and both registration and abstract submission continues until the end of April 1st. We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused.

April 1st: Abstract system crashed and extention of deadline

Our abstract system is temporarily out of order. We try to restore the system back online as soon as possible. We will inform about the restoration of the system on this webpage. Due to this the deadline for both registration and abstract submission has been postoponed to the end of April 1st -- regardless of the time zone. We are very sorry for the inconvenience.

March 31st: Advice for author/affiliation problems with the abstract submission

Last minute advice -- we have had reports that some of you are experiencing problems with author names or affiliations with the abstract submission form, especially if there are many authors/affiliations. For the time being, you can simply submit with one author and affiliation, and e-mail the complete list of authors/affiliations to us (acm-2014@helsinki.fi). We can correct the author list in the submitted abstract.

March 31st: Deadline for registrations with normal fee and for abstracts

Deadline for abstracts and registrations (normal fee) is today. In practice, the deadline is April 1st Finnish time since the LOC will already be sleeping when some of you will still submit from your own time zone within Monday :)

In case there is a problem with registration form or abstract submission, don't panic. Send us an e-mail and we will try to help on April 1st or 2nd. Your registration/submission will not be treated as 'late' in that case. Be patient with our answer, since our mailbox is quite full after today.

March 27th: Small website change

March 26th: Registration count reached 200!

200 registrations, 100 abstracts, 35 countries!

March 25: Due date for normal conference fee extended

We decided to move the due date for the payment of the normal conference fee to April 30th. You should still register and send abstract(s) before March 31st. Support decisions will be made before April 30th, as well as approval of abstract that are sent before the deadline.

March 13th: Registration count reached 100!

We have received already over 100 registrations and 25 abstract! Including invited speakers, we are now expecting participants from 33 countries.

March 5th: Mailing list for the conference

We have opened a mailing list for the ACM'2014 participants and other people that are interested to receive information about the conference. All registered persons will be automatically added to the list. The list address is acm2014-info@helsinki.fi. The list is moderated, so mails sent to the list will not be forwarded before approval by the list administrator.

If you want to join the list, or resign from the list, send e-mail to majordomo@helsinki.fi. The subject of the message does not matter, but the content should be subscribe acm2014-info your-email@address, or unsubscribe acm2014-info your-email@a ddress if you want to leave the list.

March 5th: New information about conference support

We have new information to people applying for support for the conference participation. Please see the new Support-section.

February 7th: Registration count reached 50!

We are happy to notice that there is interest on the forecoming ACM conference. We opened the registration on January, and we have now reached 50 registered participants. We are expecting up to ten times more guests, but since the deadline for registration is only in the end of March, we are quite pleased with the current number. If adding together current registrations and confirmed invited speakers, we are already at this point expecting 110 guests from 28 different countries. Remeber to register!

January 13th: Hotel reservations fixed

There was some minor problems considering the hotel reservations from Scandic Grand Marina and Sokos Hotel Helsinki using our reservations codes, but they are now fixed. Both codes are working and valid between June 29 and July 6.

January 10th: Temporary problems with hotel reservations

There has been some minor problems considering the hotel reservations from Scandic Grand Marina and Sokos Hotel Helsinki using our reservations codes. Codes for Scandic Grand Marina were not valid outside the time June 29 – July 4. That has been changed so that the code is valid for hotel reservations between June 29 and July 6.

The code for Sokos Hotel Helsinki is not currently working, but the hotel has been informed and the code should start working again soon.

January 7th: Registration and abstract submission open!

Registration and abstract submission for ACM'2014 are now open!

This website also now has a number of new pages and content on registration, social programme etc. Please read the instructions on registration and abstract submission carefully before registering.

December 31st: Registration and abstract submission

Registration and abstract submission will be opened on January 7th, 2014. Have a nice New Year!

November 13th: Plans for registration and abstract submission

We plan to open the registration and the abstract submission system at the start of 2014. At that time we should also have detailed information on the suggested accommodation choices.

November 2nd: Updates on invited speakers

The list of invited speakers is updated. We are glad to tell that almost all the invited speakers have been able to accept the invitation. The list of speakers and topics is still not complete, but we continue to update it as we receive confirmations.

October 4th: website updates

The planning of the ACM conference goes on. In our latest LOC meeting we formulated a more detailed draft of the conference programme. There have also been some additions to to our LOC team. Our logo graphics are also ready, and the website has been updated in the official style.

We aim to open conference registration and abstract submission at the beginning of January.

ACM 2014 to be held in Helsinki

The Asteroids, Comets, Meteors conference will be organized on June 30–July 4, 2014, in Helsinki, Finland. The head of the organizing committee is Professor Karri Muinonen from the Department of Physics, University of Helsinki.